Apple Loop: The Week in Review

Catching you up on some of the things that happened around Apple, Tim Cook and Steve Jobs this past week.

Apple Becomes Downright Chatty. For years, reporters following Apple could predict their two-word response to almost any question: No comment. But under CEO Tim Cook, Apple has turned into a rather loquacious company. First there was their 400-word statement in February, announcing that the Fair Labor Association would be investigating labor practices at their partners' factories in China. And last week, they offered up the 269-word statement below in response to the "news" that Apple uses various legal strategies to reduce its tax liability (though what its charitable contributions and withholding of employee income taxes has anything to do with its corporate tax rate, I don't know.) Cook, unlike Steve Jobs, seems more willing to think different about public discourse. Could the Apple "no comment" soon become a thing of the past?

Over the past several years, we have created an incredible number of jobs in the United States. The vast majority of our global work force remains in the U.S., with more than 47,000 full-time employees in all 50 states. By focusing on innovation, we’ve created entirely new products and industries, and more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers — from the people who create components for our products to the people who deliver them to our customers. Apple’s international growth is creating jobs domestically since we oversee most of our operations from California. We manufacture parts in the U.S. and export them around the world, and U.S. developers create apps that we sell in over 100 countries. As a result, Apple has been among the top creators of American jobs in the past few years.

Apple also pays an enormous amount of taxes which help our local, state and federal governments. In the first half of fiscal year 2012 our U.S. operations have generated almost $5 billion in federal and state income taxes, including income taxes withheld on employee stock gains, making us among the top payers of U.S. income tax.

We have contributed to many charitable causes but have never sought publicity for doing so. Our focus has been on doing the right thing, not getting credit for it. In 2011, we dramatically expanded the number of deserving organizations we support by initiating a matching gift program for our employees.

Apple has conducted all of its business with the highest of ethical standards, complying with applicable laws and accounting rules. We are incredibly proud of all of Apple’s contributions.

It's for you! The iPhone5 cometh. September? October? Whatever. Everyone knows that a new iPhone is coming later this year (after all, Apple has introduced a new iteration every year since its smartphone went on sale in 2007). iLounge fueled this week's spate of stories, saying it will be thinner and longer than the current iPhone 4S, with a larger, 4-inch display. But the most interesting story to me about the iPhone came from comments made by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who said at a conference that he wishes his company had never offered an unlimited, all-you-can-eat data plan to iPhone users. AT&T users know that the company stopped offering unlimited plans in 2010. Stephenson also talked about new services that could undermine AT&T's business. “You lie awake at night worrying about what is that which will disrupt your business model. Apple iMessage is a classic example. If you’re using iMessage, you’re not using one of our messaging services, right? That’s disruptive to our messaging revenue stream.” What you call disruption, Mr. Stephenson, others call progress.

New MacBooks in the Air? New slimmer MacBook Pros are expected soon, with SlashGear reporting that Apple will jettison the optical drive to make room for a solid-state drive and a bigger battery. The MacBook Pro was last updated in Feb. 2011. Also expect a new version of the MacBook Air soon as well; the last time the Air was updated was in July 2011. With notebooks now accounting for 70 percent of Mac sales, makes sense that Apple would want new models ready for the dad-and-grad shopping season — and to make up for an expected decline in iPhone sales in its fiscal third quarter after blowout demand last quarter.

The Steve Jobs Mac Sales Pitch You've Never Seen Before: Haven't made it to the theaters yet to see The Avengers but looking for a little entertainment? Thanks to Network World, you can watch a nine-minute black-and-white film called '1944' that features Steve Jobs having a heck of a good time portraying Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with cigarette holder in hand and plummy accent, to tout the Mac. Yep, Steve Jobs as FDR. "Set as a World War II tale of good vs. IBM, it is a broadcast-quality production (said to have cost $50,000) that was designed to fire up Apple's international sales force at a 1984 meeting in Hawaii." As Apple fans will immediately note, it's partly a play on the famous Apple 1984 ad introducing the Macintosh: "On January 24, 1984, Apple Computer introduced Macintosh. And we saw why 1984 was like ... 1944." Network World said it got the video from former Apple employee Craig Elliott, now CEO of Pertino Networks, a cloud-computing startup located a skip from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California. Thank you for sharing. So how is it? Great. Insanely great. "They have the plague, but we have the cure...They are the elephant. We are the mouse." I can already picture the t-shirt. Enjoy.